Pinterest can be a powerful and fun addition to your travel and tourism PR social networking program. For those of you not already on the bandwagon, Pinterest is a social networking platform that allows users to create virtual bulletin boards on which they can “pin” inspiring images or videos.
Followers can like your pins, effectively bookmarking them, or repin them to their own boards to share them with their own followers. Gorgeous travel shots are particularly suited to the Pinterest audience; the combination of images, video and descriptions can bring a place to life for its followers. It’s a visually rich way to create a buzz around any travel destination.
Both islands use a mixture of original content from the Visitors Bureau uploaded to Pinterest, and repinned content posted by other Pinterest fans of Guam and Kosrae. Being engaged by sharing images is part of what it’s all about. With that in mind, Pinterest posts can easily be shared across platforms, cross-promoting your posts via Facebook and Twitter.
Contact us if you’d like to talk about having The Placemaking Group spearhead your travel destination’s social networking strategy.
Do you want better SEO? Do you know why you want better SEO? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is becoming one of the most effective tools in the world of marketing–but only when it is used correctly. In the world of PR, we’ve been using it for years. Our goal is to get journalists to find the information for their story ideas at our clients’ websites, or by contacting them directly. We do keyword tweets on Twitter. We make sure that the keywords are clear on press releases and on our clients’ websites.
One of the ways to get better Search Engine Optimization is a process called Article Marketing. Here are two excellent resources for Article Marketing. You can start at Wikipedia and get the basics. There you learn that Article Marketing has been around as long as there have been newspapers and magazines. To use Article Marketing effectively, you must be an expert at something. You write an article about that subject, and you try to get it placed in a newspaper or magazine. The article has your name on it, and you are on your way to becoming well-known in your industry. That’s how Public Relations really started in the early 1900s. When the early PR professionals realized that if they helped make the journalist’s job easier by providing the right information for a story, they could get their clients’ stories placed in print publications.
When you add the Internet with Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., Article Marketing became, for some agencies (called Black Hat agencies), a way of tricking the search engines to get your company higher up on the search engine listings. There were sites on the web that charged you for a link. Google and their colleagues eventually figured out what the Black Hat agencies were doing; they made it very difficult for them to succeed.
But the actual concept of Article Marketing really can work for you. Your story has to be well written and informative. It can be a blog post, a press release that you have on your site, an article that you got placed in some other journalist website, or a case study that you have on your site. You want people to read it, and then go to your website and contact you. Phil Stone has written a really instructive piece called “What Is Article Marketing?” He gives you a good idea of the process, and what is possible.
The important thing to remember is to make sure your keywords are embedded in your story. But more importantly, make sure your story is worth reading–or it is a waste of your time and money.
I’m excited that today is the first day of class for my Saint Mary’s College of California PR class that I teach each year! We study real life publicity and marketing experiences. The goal of my class is for each student to understand that they can have a career in Public Relations or they can learn how to use PR to enhance their careers. Or both!
Now I’ll talk to my students for a moment… Public Relations basic job is to make a reporter’s job easier, this is a mantra you will hear though-out the semester in this course. However to make a reporters job easier you have to make information accessible. The most commonly used tool to gain information is the internet. Blogs and other forms of social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) have become key to reaching your target audience and starting a conversation.
In this course you will be required to check this blog on a regular basis. It is updated often with topics pertaining to public relations, advertising and marketing. Social media has become exponentially important in the world of PR and it is a tool that is constantly changing and the more you use it the more knowledgeable you become.
One of the assignments is to read one of two excellent books about social media. Here they are…
“Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies,” by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li.These two Forrester analysts give you the picture and especially how to really spend a big budget on social media. I’m not joking about this. Most social media strategies are based on spending tiny amounts of money. This book shows how big businesses can better use social media. Some of my students are going to work for large companies. I want to make sure they are armed!
Then, onto some really effective, hands-on strategies with “New Rules of Marketing and PR,” by David Meerman Scott. This is a book that I predicted a year ago would not seem dated in the near future, as so many business books do. And I was right! A year later, it’s still just as relevant as it was when it came out. And it’s one of the most sensible online marketing books I’ve ever read.
A marketing tool to help you become better known and increase awareness of your business is public speaking. However, landing speaking engagements takes some work. Here are five ways to help you get booked as a speaker.
1) Define Your Speaking Topics
Define your expertise with a catchy or compelling headline that will clearly distinguish you from the competition. Placemaking Group’s CEO, Dennis Erokan speaks to audiences on the topic of “Get Famous,” as well as “Get Famous with Social Media.”
We talk a lot about “Getting Famous” here at the Placemaking Group. What we mean by that is simple. Leveraging your expertise to establish yourself as an industry leader and to increase your visibility will help your business thrive. In this week’s video, Placemaking Group’s President, Dennis Erokan, explains.
Here are a few steps you can take to “Get Famous” in your field of expertise.
The Internet changed our world and then the recession rocked it. With lightning speed, public relations experts, public information officers, communication and marketing departments embraced Internet communication tools overnight.
We’re now experts – or quickly becoming experts:
Websites are more engaging
SEO is the name of the game
Email communication has replaced paper newsletters
Online advertising is commonplace
Social media is becoming understood and implemented more effectively
News releases are sent out over the wire and through targeted email lists
Blogs’ content has improved significantly and is published on a timely schedule (more…)
It is quite possible that your product, company, or destination is something that the media would like to write about.
In order to get coverage for your story, it helps to know what the media is looking for. There are several tools and strategies you can use to get in front of reporters.
Sign up on HelpAReporter.com (HARO). This is a website where reporters, writers and producers list topics they are writing about and request specific interview sources. You can sign up for free on this. By using this site, we have placed stories for several of our clients, including HFS Consultants, a healthcare consulting company specializing in healthcare management, operations and strategic planning: (more…)
Results of two recent studies show that companies trying to reach consumers with healthcare information may be missing the boat if they are relying on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to reach their target audiences. Media relations such as news releases, traditional and online story placements, and website postings and links prove to be the most effective way to reach healthcare consumers.
One national consumer study conducted by Makovsky Health and Kelton concludes that consumers seeking healthcare information go online for health information, but they go to news sites, Wikipedia, online health properties and other traditional web sources 93 percent of the time. They turn to Facebook, Twitter and Google, Yahoo and Bing searches only 7 percent of the time.
93 percent of health information consumed by research participants is embedded or included in articles and other content published on websites like WebMD and Wikipedia
5 percent of health information is from searching on sites such as Google, Yahoo and Bing
2 percent of health content is received via socializing, Twitter and Facebook status updates
Consumers trust traditional news sources
The second study by Enspektos, LLC, designed to shed light on where companies should invest their marketing dollars to reach consumers in cost-efficient, effective and engaging ways, reports consumers seeking health information online are more likely to trust news sites, Wikipedia, WebMD, online health magazine websites than social media sites like Facebook.
The most interesting research showed that when it comes to news and announcements from a company, consumers are most likely to believe traditional sources:
53 percent are most likely to believe company news from a press release
29 percent are most apt to believe what is posted on a company website
12 percent are most apt to believe a corporate Facebook page
2 percent believe company news posted on Twitter
by Jan Burch, Vice President The Placemaking Group
The Sacramento Bee is a media target for The River District.
When a client tells me he or she would like a story in a particular traditional or online publication, blog, TV or radio news show, my work has just begun. I need to subscribe, read, watch, listen to that media, and find the reporter(s) who cover that industry that might be interested in the kind of story I want to place.
1. Act Like a Reporter.
Look around your company, listen to associates in meetings, think like a reporter. When you find something others outside your company would be interested in, write a news release. Weave information together that a reporter would need: facts, industry trends, insights from industry experts and clients or customers. Add a paragraph that describes your company and how to reach you and include: phone number, website, Facebook, Twitter addresses. (more…)
As I mentioned in my last blog post, if you want something to really go viral on social media, it has to capture people’s hearts as well as their minds. We want our social media campaigns to be easy to do, but the most important element is how heartfelt the response is.
A sad but perfect example is what happened to Progressive Insurance over the last two weeks. (more…)
Pinterest can be a powerful and fun addition to your travel and tourism PR social networking program. For those of you not already on the bandwagon, Pinterest is a social networking platform that allows users to create virtual bulletin boards on which they can “pin” inspiring images or videos.
